Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Amy Tenowich wrote an outraged column for the L.A. Daily News this week, expressing her displeasure at the overt sexualization of female anchors on the local news. She listed a group of women, and exclaimed, "These women are gorgeous!"

Now, in fairness to Ms. Tenowich, since I have no interest in dead children or overturned tractor-trailers I don't watch the local news, so I'd never heard of any of the women she mentioned, except for Jillian Barberie.

In my opinion, Jillian Barberie does not look "gorgeous." The words I'd pick are "shopworn" or "slatternly." In my opinion, Jillian Barberie looks like, if you happened to wander into the wrong bus depot men's room late enough at night, you might find her blowing a guy... and if you were drunk and hard-up enough, and if you were willing to give up half your sandwich, you might get blown, too. But that's my opinion.

So, I was not brimming with confidence that Ms. Tenowich and I would agree on what "gorgeous" means.

Still, when I read the following sentence, I was intrigued:

"Fans can also check out [Lauren Sanchez's] photo on the sister channel Fox11 Web site, in which roughly 65 percent of her left breast's profile graces cyberspace. Titillating!"

Now whenever I read anything about 65 percent of any breast being anywhere online, I am one fast-clickin' sonofabitch. This is the picture I found:

Gentlemen reading this, I ask you: Is that gorgeous? Is that sexy? Is that titillating?

That is scary.

Women and men have very different ideas about what is sexy. The difference is, men know that, and women don't.

If you have mangled and reassembled and injected your face so it is incapable of expressing human emotion? (See Sunday nights, ABC)... Not a sexy look.

Or starved yourself so your ribs poke through your sides and your cheekbones pop out of your eye sockets? (Hope you TiVo'd Sunday night on ABC)... Not a sexy look.

And if you have tweezed, shaved, threaded, chainsawed, or otherwise removed your eyebrows and then painted new ones somewhere else on your head, I'm sorry, you are not sexy.

And if it's too late.... If you already have no eyebrows... I want you to try this experiment:

Buy a doll. Or draw a face on an egg. Then draw eyebrows on it EXACTLY the way you usually draw yours.

If you feel the resulting face would frighten a toddler, you really need to find a new drawn-eyebrow configuration.

I mean, Lauren Sanchez may be a very nice person. But if you built a snowman on your front lawn and put those eyebrows on it, it would take maybe two hours for some parent to knock on your door, a crying child in tow, and ask what kind of sicko you are.

So if I can just get those of you with scary-snowman eyebrows to realize you're making no one hot except for Amy Tenowich, then my work here is done. You're welcome.

By the way, there isn't time now, but just something to think about: If any of your sweaters sparkle anywhere on them, or if any of your earrings are bigger than your fists... 'nuf said.

And when men see that the toe of your shoe is pointy enough to open a can of motor oil, we don't get turned on. We get nauseous.